Writing En Masse

Talk about writing alone in a group—that’s NaNoWriMo. We’re 9 days into the process and people’s fingers are flying. For fun, I signed up both in my current geographic region and in the region where I was born. Of course, I won’t join them in person—I’m basically a “lurker”—but it’s interesting to see how another region handles itself. My own region (SF Bay Area) is pretty silent online. I haven’t received too many emails and I’m certainly not sending any. My original region (Dundee, Angus, Scotland) is going great guns with emails on everything from logistics to preventing repetitive stress syndrome. I’ve shared a few of their “links” with my two “buddies”. That’s another part of the process: buddies. I have two and have refrained from acquiring more on the grounds that I’ll just get distracted. This post is a lull for me between work, NaNoWriMo, poetry, sleep, and eating, although I tend to eat at my computer while I’m carrying on with work or writing of some sort. This past August, I focused on generating poetry in the 30/30 project with Tupelo Press. This month, I’m focused on my novel, again generating material. What August taught me and November’s reminding me is that it’s critical to generate work, even as revision, revision, revision is essential for quality results. Come December, I’m going to try to allot an appropriate balance of time between the two.